“Man accused of selling daughter for cash, beer.” Yes, that’s actually the headline.
GREENFIELD, Calif. (AP) — Police have arrested a Greenfield man for allegedly arranging to sell his 14-year-old daughter into marriage in exchange for $16,000, 100 cases of beer and several cases of meat.
Police said they only learned of the deal after the 36-year-old man went to them to get his daughter back because payment wasn’t made as promised. The man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of human trafficking.
Officers also arrested an 18-year-old man on suspicion of statutory rape. Investigators believe the girl went willingly with the man, but she’s under California’s legal age of consent and can’t legally marry.
Police say arranged marriages involving underage girls have become a problem in this small Central Coast farming community.
Maybe the father can defend himself in court by arguing that he’s simply a proponent of traditional marriage.
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I just threw up in my mouth. Can JPL or NASA please tell us where the next meteorite will strike the Earth, so we can stand this guy on that spot?
-gadfly
Love the comment about “traditional marriage!” I’ve been doing a lot of reading on what “traditional marriage” looks like – No thanks!
This is just downright disgusting. What has this world come to? Selling your child in order to get beer. Where are this man’s morals? Where is the women that gave birth to this girl to tell him this is NOT ok! I feel so sorry for this little girl, she should never have to go back to that home and live with her dad. No human deserves to be treated this way. This sick man deserves to be punished for his atrocious actions.
God I hate to say this, but maybe she’s better off somewhere else-tho not with someone who would buy her–that with a patent who would do such a thing.
I understand the cash part, but beer. Talk about a blow to the self esteen!
/me making the most amusement possible out of this situation…
I understand the cash part, but beer? Talk about a blow to the self esteem!
/me making the most amusement possible out of this situation…
shah8: It’s kind of..not an amusing situation. Wow…
Wait… am I reading this wrong, or did the man who sold his daughter go to the police to make a complaint about the payment?
Wait… am I reading this wrong, or did the man who sold his daughter go to the police to make a complaint about the payment?
Oh, cops get that kind of stuff all the time. Someone stole the money I gave him for drugs. Someone stole my drugs. The hooker robbed me. Etc.
Hey, if these people had any brains, they wouldn’t be doing this shit in the first place.
I forget, who was it about 10 years ago who said that most parents don’t deserve to have kids, or something to that effect? After my internship with a Juvenile Probation office last fall and stories like this, I can’t argue. How about parenting 101 starting in high school? This country needs to get real about the whole experience of parenting, and acknowledging that it truly IS one of the toughest jobs in the world!!
There’s more going on here than meets the eye. Note the last sentence: “Police say arranged marriages involving underage girls have become a problem in this small Central Coast farming community.”
A little googling reveals that 20% of the population of Greenfield is composed of recent immigrants from Oaxaca province, many of whom are indigenous people who don’t speak English or Spanish. Arranged marriages are standard in their culture and men typically pay dowries. Fourteen is young but not unheard of.
I don’t think this is a story about a disgusting deranged man. I think it’s about a traditional Native American patriarchal society that’s been uneasily transplanted into a California town.
PS-I’m not defending it. I’ll go along with anyone who wants to argue that Native American culture sucks.
PPS- okay, not all Native American culture. Just this Native American culture.
20% of the residents of Greenfield are Oaxacan immigrants of Native American origin. Most of them speak neither English nor Spanish. In their culture, arranged marriage is customary and marriage in the early teens for women is common. Dowries are standard. The father in this case is doing something that is normal and expected in his culture. By the customs of his people, he’s not deranged, perverted or immoral. That doesn’t mean it’s right.
I am as horrified as you all (believe me…I’m still trying to hold on to my cookies); however, I am a little curious as to whether or not this was a cultural situation. California seems to be a bit of a Mecca for immigrants of small Eastern tribes such as the Hmong who still practice these kinds of arranged marriages. While the article does not mention any particular race, I am curious as it does mention that this has been a problem in that community, and the farther obviously saw no harm in what he was doing. Regardless of the father’s intentions, we need to make it clear that we do not stand for this sort of thing in the USA, but I can’t help but wonder… Is this just another case of American crazy, or a cultural clash at its worst?
My uncle’s a cop, he’s always said that you don’t get smart criminals – they’re smart enough to do something else with their lives.
That there are two people in the world who thought this was OK, I just can’t process it.
Police say arranged marriages involving underage girls have become a problem in this small Central Coast farming community.
This suggests to me that there is another culture at work here, from somewhere wherein the trading had once taken place with cattle or gold, and not beer. Not that this makes it okay in the least, but it puts the behavior in perspective, and suggests there’s more of a problem to face than one pathological guy.
The girl went willingly, huh? Poor thing, she’s not the first one to grab hold of the first guy who could get her away from her dad. I hope she doesn’t go back to him, either.
Oops. Sorry about the triple post. I thought my first ones had been disallowed by the moderator as too nasty so I wrote a more even-toned one.
More like two billion, Alice, if not four. There is a stark conflict between progressive values and cultural egalitarianism; this case is not a freakish aberration, it is (statistically) normal for a wide chunk of the world’s cultures. The multiculti fantasy is that every culture is wonderful in its own way; the truth is more like every culture has a lot of problems but some are truly pathological in the way they treat women. Hey, I’ve got a great idea – let’s import millions of people from these cultures to our shores! That will help us improve our own cultural problems…
It is interesting that the man (not) paying the dowry was only 18. By our culture’s standards, there isn’t a huge outcry over an 18-14 matchup; many states have “Romeo and Juliet” laws to exempt such matchups from statutory rape laws, with three or four years as the usual allowed gap. I guess California isn’t one such state. I wonder if the participants in this transaction thought they were OK under the law because the wedded couple were reasonably close in age.
I hate that I first saw this article in the “odd news” section of yahoo news.
Like ha ha, how odd, someone’s trying to sell his daughter! Not in the crime section, not even in the weddings section, but in the section where we see shit about UFOs or the Virgin Mary’s face appearing on a Pop-Tart.
Way to assume that the entire population is just waiting to breed.
@William (no. 22) We teach plenty of things in school that we don’t expect everyone to use in life. Teaching geometry in high school is not assuming that the entire population is just waiting to become mathematicians, and teaching Latin is not assuming that the entire population is just *itching* to become classical scholars. Similarly, teaching parenting skills (among other life skills) does not assume that everyone is planning to have children.
…and meat!?!?!?!
Fucking fuck.
The girl went “willingly” — as if a 14 year old has any say with an 18 year-old.
I’ll accept 16, maybe even 15, for a “Romeo and Juliet” situation — but a 14 year old girl is a child compared to an 18 year old male: both in maturity, and usually, size.
I’d question the “willingness” of a 14 year old up against both an 18 year old, and her father.
The money was a dowry. The meat and beer were for the wedding feast. http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/13/daughter.for.sale/
A Powerpoint accessible at the Greenfield police website explains that marrriage at 13 or 14 is the rule in Oaxacan native American culture.
We also teach that the civil war was about slavery, gloss over the Native American genocide, and focus on abstinence. The bottom line is that we abuse the fact that kids are a captive audience and inflict or indoctrinate whenever we decide we want some universal social standard to be slavishly adhered to. If you decide to teach parenting skills what you really mean is that you will be teaching someone’s standards as to how children should be parented with absolutely no guarantee who gets to build that curriculum using what values. At the same time you reinforce the social norms regarding families and waste the time of students who have no interest in children. Thats before you try to figure out what basic or enrichment programs will be plundered to pay for the parenting classes and what classes will be canceled to make room for them in an already packed schedule.
We also teach that the civil war was about slavery, gloss over the Native American genocide, and focus on abstinence. The bottom line is that we abuse the fact that kids are a captive audience and inflict or indoctrinate whenever we decide we want some universal social standard to be slavishly adhered to. If you decide to teach parenting skills what you really mean is that you will be teaching someone’s standards as to how children should be parented with absolutely no guarantee who gets to build that curriculum using what values. At the same time you reinforce the social norms regarding families and waste the time of students who have no interest in children. Thats before you try to figure out what basic or enrichment programs will be plundered to pay for the parenting classes and what classes will be canceled to make room for them in an already packed schedule.
All of which are completely separate issues from the one you brought up initially, which is all I was contesting.
We’re getting off topic here, so I’ll drop it at this, but I don’t really think they are separate issues. Our educational system is terrible and geared towards indoctrination. It is generally geared towards creating a pliable and docile work force. The problem is already there, but that doesn’t mean expanding the crap parade to include the crap you’d like to see is ok.
Hate much?
I thank my public school teachers and my kids’ teachers. I can read. I can type. I can argue. I would love to see parenting classes (no, don’t shake the baby! no, no hitting with electrical cords!). How are people from dysfunctional families supposed to learn to parent if no one ever tries to teach them? Also, more classes on budgeting and cooking.
I also liked algebra but not geometry.
William – I never suggested teaching parenting in school, and I never supported it. I just pointed out that your initial objection was bogus.
Peace.
Why yes, and quite often.
Because of my public school system I had to learn how to do the first two things you mentioned on my own and the third I only learned from the constant conflict I experienced as a disabled kid who didn’t want to be put in a backroom somewhere until they were someone else’s problem.
Child abuse isn’t about ignorance, it’s about power, lack of self control, or sadism. A parenting class taught by a burnt out union teacher who can’t be fired for incompetence because of tenure and who’s only real goal for the day is to make it through with as little trouble as possible isn’t going to fix any of those factors.
Yes, how oh how will anyone ever learn anything if they aren’t coerced into sitting for the mandatory and socially approved propaganda of the community in which they live?
Look, I’m sure there are great public schools out there that have the time, money, and commitment to offer quality parenting classes. The problem is that I’ve only really encountered those in relatively wealthy suburban areas. I grew up in a very large city and learned despite my education in a public school, not as a result of it. As bad as the schools I went to were, the school I worked at was even worse. Its hard to have confidence in, or endorse the expansion of, a system which you have seen broken far more often than functional. Perhaps the idea might work in less populated areas where people care, or in areas with a high enough tax base that the schools are competitive (although I’d still be opposed) but I simply don’t have much faith that they’d do anything other than create another job for a teacher in the systems I’ve seen.
And, to bring it back to the original post, the case we’re talking about involves a man who sold his daughter into “marriage” for beer, meat, and cash; he then saw himself as the victim because he wasn’t paid quickly enough. That kind of callous disregard for the rights of others isn’t something a 15 week course back in high school is going to solve. That kind of blatantly inhuman behavior runs a hell of a lot deeper than ignorance or lack of education. Someone like this man isn’t going to think to himself “wait…that parenting class I slept through a decade and a half ago…wasn’t there a chapter on not trading your kids to a rapist for beer money? shit…maybe I should think this over.”
“the case we’re talking about involves a man who sold his daughter into “marriage” for beer, meat, and cash; he then saw himself as the victim because he wasn’t paid quickly enough. ”
No, actually, we’re not talking about that. We’re talking a family from a traditional society that was arranging a marriage in a traditional way, with provision made for a wedding feast involving meat and beer for guests and a dowry for the bride’s family. We’re talking about an illiterate father, fluent only in a native American language, doing things the way his people have done things for centuries, who has run headlong into a culture clash that may well stick him in prison.
Jill got it wrong and she doesn’t seem to want to post a correction. But read the comments and see.
Bloix: I stand by my characterization. Why? Because I don’t give a good god damn if the father was doing things the way his culture has done them since time immemorial, I don’t care if he can read or write, I don’t care what language he speaks or what he was planning on doing with the goods he received in exchange for his daughter, I really don’t. Human beings are not goods to be exchanged for money, influence, or alliance. A culture clash, to me, is shaking with the wrong hand, not taking your shoes off when you enter someone’s home, getting pissed when someone doesn’t show up for a meeting exactly “on time”, or serving someone with dietary restrictions unacceptable food. Here we have a case of an individual engaging in behaviors which, while culturally appropriate, violate the rights of others. That makes it a whole new ballgame.
Willliam:
I never intended my original post to invoke so much hostility in one person, then again, I can’t control your response. But I CAN ask that you would please respond with less rancor. Now then…
1) Way to completely misinterpret my original post–assuming you read the whole thing. Then again, maybe I wasn’t completely clear. Given MY OWN experience/observations from last semester of kids in both rural and urban schools, there seems to be a trend of teenage girls having babies–because it IS trendy. The reason I suggested a parenting class was for the purpose of serving as a caveat to students, perhaps as a means of saying, “hey, this baby thing? Ain’t as easy as you think it is!!!” I NEVER assumed that ALL would want to procreate. I don’t recall being hostile in deanig with your or your postings, and I take great umbrage at your response to my benign expressions on this board, so please be civil.
2. I actually DO agree with most of your last post! And it IS an outrage. This man cannot possibly be so ensconced in his culture that he cannot comprehend right from wrong in this country. Even if he is completely clueless–tough break. Humans are not commerce, and these type of actions only support the mentality of those who would try to justify human trafficking. Think we can meet somewhere halfway, here?
I also remember from somewhere a situation where a young mother was spanking her year-old baby for toileting accidents. When it was explained to her simply and straightforwardly that biologically speaking consicious bowel control isn’t generally happening til 2 1/2 -3 years of age, she said with relief, “Oh, good, then I can quit whuppin’ him.” Which is just sad. I would support either parenting classes or good teaching of human development. Which, of course, would include how to get pregnant or not get pregnant with a reasonable degree of success.
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